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ADDRESSES 

DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION of 
THE AGRICULTURAL HIGH SCHOOL 
at PETERSHAM, MASSACHUSETTS 

MAY 22, 1908 




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ADDRESSES 



DELIVERED AT THE 



DEDICATION 



of the 



Agricultural High School 



AT 



PETERSHAM, MASS. 

MAY 22, 1908 



BOSTON 

Geo. H. Ellis Co., Printers, 272 Congress Street 

1909 



In ex^.^a 



MAR 2 ^^ 6 






The new school-house in Petersham, built of stone from the 
adjacent fields, upon a beautiful and commodious site, was the 
gift of natives and friends of the town. It was dedicated on 
the 22d of May, 1908. 

The occasion, which brought together the school committees, 
superintendents, and teachers of all the neighboring towns, was 
made memorable by the presence of Mr. George H. Martin, 
Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, President 
Eliot, of Harvard University, Hon. Carroll D. Wright, President 
of Clark College of Worcester, and Mr. Kenyon L. Butterfield, 
President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst, 
— all of whom addressed the large audience assembled in the 
Unitarian church, which, unhappily, was burned in the month 
of September following. 

At the request of the School Committee, Mr. James W. Brooks 
acted as Chairman. 

The exercises began with singing by the pupils of the school, 
followed by prayer by the Rev. Mr. Spurr. 

As President Wright was obliged to leave by an early train, he 
was the first introduced, as follows : — 

"There occasionally appears a man of exceptional character 
and ability, who begins life with such profound appreciation of 
its opportunities and responsibilities as consecrates his labor to 
broad and widening fields of public service and makes the world 
his debtor. If he may crown his career in such relation to the 
young as enables him to impart to them the wealth of his gifts 
and attainments and the inspiration of his example, there is 
increasing hope for the worthy successors of whom the world 
stands ever in need. 

"We all recognize such a man in the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, 
President of Clark College of Worcester, whom I have the pleas- 
sure of introducing to you." [Applause.] 



ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT CARROLL D.WRIGHT. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, — It certainly was a 
great honor which your authorities conferred upon me by in- 
viting me to be present on this occasion of the dedication of 
your beautiful and unique institution of learning. 

Massachusetts has always been proud of her school system, 
and is justly proud of it; but occasionally there appears in the 
country a city or a State that almost seems to take precedence 
over our good old State. This is perhaps due in some de- 
gree to the habit of our thought. That thought is that we 
are about as good as anybody on earth, and that our school 
system must necessarily be better than that of any other com- 
munity. 

We may therefore fall into the position of a school down on 
the Cape. When Horace Mann was secretary of the Board of 
Education, he visited that school,— a small country school, — 
and he found it one of the best that he had ever visited ; and he 
was insane enough to say when he was leaving, in making his 
final remarks, that it was the best school in the Commonwealth. 
Well, that school, under that praise of Horace Mann, stood still 
for fifty years. Any suggestion of improvement was met always 
with the remark, "Didn't Horace Mann say this was the best 
school in the Commonwealth?" 

Now we may be caught in that way in relation to our whole 
public school system; but it cannot be alleged of Petersham. 
You have established here an institution that is unique, and 
which I may call, I think justly, ideal, because it combines the 
cultural work of the school system as we know it with vocational 
work, which is now in the minds of every one, not only in this, 
but-in all other countries. 

Why does this vocational idea take possession of the public 
mind? I would not abate one jot or one tittle of the cultural 
work of the schools. I would not even allow in colleges the 
teaching of the classics to become obsolete. I am old-fashioned 
enough to believe that Latin and Greek constitute the founda- 



6 

tion of many things. And yet we have, too, in all our public 
institutions looking to the present conditions, those things that 
are surrounding us, those calls upon educational institutions 
which must be met. 

The idea of industrial education is abroad, but the idea of 
agricultural education through the high schools and those of 
the lower grade in the East has not been advanced to so great a 
degree. Some Western and some Southern States have adapted 
agricultural courses to the ordinary curriculum of secondary 
and high schools. Those States are devoted to agriculture. 
This, we say, is not an agricultural State; and yet the products 
of the agriculture of Massachusetts amount to the goodly sum 
of nearly sixty millions of dollars every year. Should we not 
pay some attention to it? 

The new departure at the Agricultural College at Amherst, 
whereby that institution has established a normal department 
for the very purpose of fitting teachers to take up elementary 
agriculture in the common schools, will not in any way lower 
the standard of cultural work. 

In the investigations which I have had the pleasure of making, 
under the authority of Congress, of industrial education and 
technical and trade education as well, in different parts of the 
world where these ideas prevail, it has been established beyond 
doubt that a certain amount of work per day in connection 
with the academic work of the schools not only leads to no 
deterioration in that academic work, but enables the boy and 
the girl to stand higher still in the book work. Why, that's 
logical, that's giving a sound mind in a sound body, that is 
bringing up the child in the way he should go ; and the results 
everywhere are beneficent. 

Here, with the agricultural element of your high school, you 
are being talked about, you have already attracted the atten- 
tion of people in this State and all over the country. An agri- 
cultural high school in Massachusetts ! 

A boy, you know, can become very enthusiastic and be very 
easily interested in the construction of a machine. Any kind 
of a construction where he can see the wheels go round is fas- 
cinating to a boy. Early in life he learns this lesson. On a 
little brook running through his father's farm, a ditch, he erects 



a water wheel made with pieces of old shingle. He so adjusts 
it that the undershot current carries it around, and he is as 
proud of it as Ericsson or any other great inventor. He is 
stimulated at the start in constructive work, and it is construc- 
tive work in this life that is most attractive. The girl does not 
have that opportunity. We say the boy is interested, becomes 
enthusiastic, over machinery. I feel that myself, — there is 
nothing more inspiring than a grand piece of mechanical con- 
struction, nothing more inspiring than the ocean steamship or 
the great machinery used in engineering works. There is noth- 
ing more elevating to one, in the way of learning things, than 
to watch the movements of this vast mechanism. It tells us 
of the hidden powers of nature. We learn the powers and the 
laws of nature as applied, we understand what physics does 
when we teach it or learn it, we know the laws that govern 
the movements. And that knowledge leads us out into higher 
knowledge, until the imagination ceases to work. 

I presume you have been aboard a great ocean liner a tenth 
of a mile long, and witnessed its great machinery, with its 
triple expansion engines moving that vast construction over 
and through the waters. You have stood in the presence of 
some grand piece of mechanism. And what was the result 
upon your mind? Do you remember that little expression in 
"Childe Harold," where Byron pictures the church and the 
stranger entering it, and he says, — 

"Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; 
And why? It is not lessen'd; but thy mind, 
Expanded by the genius of the spot, 
Has grown colossal"? . . . 

That is the effect always of any great construction, — to expand 
the mind of the one who witnesses it. 

If this be the effect where we are witnessing the works of 
man, applying the laws of nature, of God, how much more 
ought we to create that inspiration, or give the opportunity 
for it to the young mind to watch the growth of nature, the 
expansion of the seed into the plant, to the tree, to the fruitage ? 

Why, we who were brought up on farms — I am not saying 
how long ago it was in my case — were never taught anything 
even of the elements of farming or of agriculture. The 



8 

science of agriculture was not known. We had no ideas. It 
was simply plough the land, fertilize it, plant the seed, keep 
the weeds down, and harvest the crop. Absolutely unromantic 
and uninspiring from that point of view! But to-day it is 
something different, thanks to our methods of education. And 
why should we not, as I have said before, become enthusiastic 
over the development of the seed, as well as over the develop- 
ment of power through different diameters of wheels and pulleys ? 

It seems to me there is a field, therefore, not alone in indus- 
trial training but in that splendid cultural training which shall 
come from the development of the very elements of physical 
life. 

But there are things that must be considered. All indus- 
trial training does not train: some of it does. We must under- 
stand the combination of elements. I remember the story of 
a young man who attended a horseshoeing school, where he 
supposed he was learning how to shoe horses. Just as he was 
about to leave the school, a man came along with a horse that 
he wished to have shod. He said he would leave him there 
while he went to the store to do some errands. He came back 
in an hour, and the horse was not shod, and he asked the young 
man what was the trouble. "Well," he said, "stranger, I 
have been working here an hour trying to shoe your horse, and 
I will be blessed if I can get his foot into the vise." He never 
had seen a horse shod, but had worked with the foot of a real 
horse which was accommodatingly put into the vise. Well, 
all of us country boys know that there is another method which 
works out practically, so that the horse is shod. 

That illustrates the absolute necessity of combining your 
shop work with your theoretical teaching, and without that 
combination there are no really good results. 

That's the trouble with manual training. The manual train- 
ing idea went over this country almost like a fever. It was a 
good thing, it paved the way for what's coming, what is, be- 
cause it taught the people that any boy or girl who understood 
the use of tools, no matter what he did with them, was 
really better off, had more enjoyment in life. Any man to-day, 
professional man or any other man, who has a kit of tools in 
his house and can mend a lock or put up a shelf when the good 



wife wants it, or anything of that kind, is a better man than 
one who cannot do that. That's what manual training does, 
and that is not all. I would not abate that, either, but I would 
extend it. The great demand to-day is for skill, for equipped 
people. Once it was well enough for a man to be able to do 
anything fairly well: he need not learn a trade if he didn't 
wish to, he could get odd jobs here and there, and make a living. 
To-day the world demands a man who knows how to do some- 
thing, and can do it fairly well. So the demand everywhere 
in business is for skill. We find that true in Massachusetts: 
it's true all over the United States. And the movement that 
is going on is simply in explanation of what you have done 
and are doing here in this beautiful town of Petersham. 
* This idea started, so far as the great movement is concerned, 
at Philadelphia at the time of the Centennial. Germany, 
France, England, Italy, and Belgium sent their products here 
to be put into comparison with ours, and the German Bis- 
marck sent word one day to his commissioner-general in Phila- 
delphia inquiring how the German goods compared with those 
of other countries, and the German commissioner-general re- 
plied that they were poor and wretched, indeed. To-day 
when you pick up an article and find the legend "Made in 
Germany" on it, you feel quite sure that it is well made. Ger- 
man skill at that time (1876) was wretched. France led the 
world in mechanical skill, in the methods of making beautiful 
things. Germany did not love France, but Germany could 
not allow France to stand in the front rank while she took the 
rear. So this great idea began to expand, Germany following 
the French system. England — always behind up to a certain 
point, and then rushing ahead; conservative and then radical, 
but never going backwards — saw the point. She took her cue 
from Germany and began to establish her industrial schools; 
and the United States lagged behind, and is now a laggard. Be- 
ginning to see the necessity of combining vocational with 
cultural education, she is beginning to establish her trade and 
industrial schools. And the movement will prosper, the move- 
ment will extend, until you will find this country able to com- 
pete with any mechanical-producing country in the world. 
And, when she does that, it will be the result of applying her 



10 

own skilled labor of its various grades, high and low, to her 
magnificent natural resources. 

We have largely imported our skill. Shall America be de- 
pendent upon foreign skill? We have grown prosperous, more 
prosperous as the years have gone on, because we have had 
such inexhaustible resources to draw from. Now we must 
compete with different movements, — the transference of in- 
dustries from one part of the country to another, as from New 
England to the South, a logical and natural and legitimate 
movement; and, when they have the skill then here in New Eng- 
land, we can say to the South, "Make all the goods we used to: 
we will make the goods that we now import, — we will give you 
as good fabrics as you can secure from any part of the world." 
And it is only from this industrial education that we can accom- 
plish this great and desired result. 

I said a man should know how to do something. I have al- 
ways considered that a man, however much he may know, how- 
ever much he may have learned in college and university, who 
cannot earn his own living and support his family, is an 
ignorant man: he is simply a man of erudition who doesn't 
know how to apply any of the principles of his knowledge. 

Some of you are old enough to remember in one of the old 
readers the story of the man, a scientific man, a professor, who 
was in Norway, and he wanted to cross about twenty miles on 
the water, and engaged a skipper to take him over. Five or 
six miles out from land the scientist said to the skipper, "My 
friend, do you know anything of the beauties of mathematics?" 
"No," said the skipper. "Then," said the professor, "you have 
lost a quarter of your whole life." A little way along again he 
said to the skipper, "Do you know anything of the grandeur 
and the beauties of astronomy?" "No," said the skipper. 
"Well, then, you have lost another quarter of your life." Pretty 
soon a squall struck the boat, and over she went; and the skip- 
per said, "My friend, do you know how to swim?" And the 
professor said, "I don't." "Then you have lost all of your 
life." Simply a crude story to illustrate the advantage of know- 
ing something and how to do it. 

Of course, few of us know how to swim; but when a man knows 
how to do something and do it well, to an extent to be able to 



11 

support himself without becoming a public charge, I believe 
with the distinguished gentleman [President Eliot] on this plat- 
form, who says that the man who knows that some one thing, 
any branch that he has thoroughly perfected himself in, is an 
educated man. 

And I wish to congratulate you that you have here to-day that 
distinguished educator, president of the oldest college in the 
continental United States, the grandest Roman of them all, 
to bring you the greetings of that grand institution at Cambridge. 
And it is happy, too, in a small way, that, while he brings you 
the greetings of that old institution, I am able to bring you the 
greetings of the youngest college in America. [Applause.] 

The Chairman. — The Massachusetts Board of Education, 
foster mother of our public school system, which in its life of 
seventy years has produced results that have received world- 
wide and fertile recognition, has at its head an accomplished 
gentleman, deeply imbued with the importance of his work and 
of the need of its intelligent expansion in every direction de- 
manded by the public welfare. Personally or through his 
officers and agents he is, as you know, in touch with all the 
towns and districts of the Commonwealth. He has taken a very 
sympathetic and helpful interest in the work that we are at- 
tempting here. 

I have the honor of presenting to you Mr. Secretary Martin, 
of the State Board of Education. [Applause.] 



ADDRESS BY SECRETARY GEORGE H. MARTIN. 

Mr. President and Friends, — Placed between one college 
president who preceded me and two to follow me, it is appro- 
priate that I should be very brief. 

I have both a personal and an official interest in this occasion, 
— a personal interest because, at the very outset of the undertak- 
ing of the establishment of this new school and the building of 
its new house, Mr. Brooks was kind enough to come and tell me 
something of the plans, and then later to bring to me the plans 
as they were developed on paper by the architect, and then to 
tell me from time to time of the progress of the work and its 
completion. So that I have been exceedingly anxious for this 
day to come, when I might actually see the school-house that I 
have seen in imagination for the last two or three years. 

And, having seen it, I congratulate the people of this old town 
of Petersham on having a school-house that I have no hesitation 
in saying is the best country school-house in this Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts [applause], combining more features of in- 
terest and of utility and of beauty than any other building. 
I might say that, when I speak of its being the most beautiful 
rural school building in Massachusetts, it is not saying much, 
because most of the rural school buildings of Massachusetts, 
you know, are painfully bare and plain. 

This school-house is not only useful, as many other school 
buildings are, but it is architecturally attractive and beautiful, 
and for that I congratulate you. You remember that the good 
bishop in that great story of "Les Miserables," when his sister 
reproved him for having devoted a part of the garden to raising 
flowers, said, "The beautiful is as useful as the useful, perhaps 
more so." And for that reason I am proud that we have in 
this State such a school building. 

I admire it, too, because it has some land with it. When Mr. 
Brooks told me that there were to be twelve acres of land, it 
almost took my breath away; and as I came across the Barre 
road and saw one of the old time school-houses perched upon 









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13 

the summit of a ledge, probably the most useless bit of land 
that existed in the town or in the district at the time that 
school-house was built, I could not help comparing the past 
with the present, and thinking that, if the modern uses of 
crushed stone had been discovered, they would have found 
some less useful place for that school-house to be put. 

I congratulate the town, not only upon having such a build- 
ing, but upon having such donors of the building. 

It is a splendid thing for a town to have sons and daughters 
so loyal and so generous and so far-seeing that they are willing 
to give of their time, means, and thought to provide so beauti- 
fully for the needs of the coming generations of the town in 
which they live. [Applause.] And I want to commend the 
example of the givers and commend the building itself to 
neighboring towns and neighboring people. 

There is an old Arabian proverb which says, " A fig-tree look- 
ing on a fig-tree becometh beautiful." So I hope that this 
building, here in the centre of the State, may become such an 
object of interest, of admiration, and of envy that many such 
buildings will arise in various parts of the State. 

There is a motive which has been very effective in this Com- 
monwealth, and I presume in others. I am not sure that it is 
the most worthy motive, but it has been very powerful. It is 
well illustrated in the case of a division of one of these old 
towns a few years ago. Part of the town had been set off, 
and there had been a good deal of feeling in the division. For 
a year or two the children in the new town went to the old 
town for their high-school privileges ; but those who had been 
most anxious to have the town divided felt that in some way 
they were not quite independent, and they wanted a high school 
of their own. The matter came up at the town meeting, where 
it was discussed. Some of the old people began to query 
whether this high-school education after all was good for much, 
and the discussion went on between the supporters of the old 
learning and the supporters of the new learning. One of the 
most active men in promoting the division of the town happened 
to be chairman of the selectmen, and he said, " Gentlemen, the 
question is not whether this high-school learning is better than 
the old-fashioned kind: it is the kind that's going, and the 



14 

town that doesn't have it is going to get left." And they 
voted an appropriation to establish the new high school. 

That motive has been very powerful in this State, — the 
motive of imitation. Each town wants to have something as 
good as the towns around it. 

I congratulate the town not only on the school building, but 
also on its somewhat unique course of study. 

President Wright has already spoken of this matter of in- 
dustrial education and vocational training. I will not attempt 
to discuss that at length, but I want to say this in regard to 
this course of study : While the domestic science part of it is not 
entirely unique (there are domestic science courses in numberless 
high schools, though I know of no town as small as this in 
which there is a course of this sort), there is no other town in 
Massachusetts in which there is the same sort of work going on 
in agriculture. This is the first, the pioneer, school in this 
kind of work. The town is to be congratulated on having set 
in motion here, put into practical operation, a scheme of edu- 
cation for the boys and girls of the town which is so purely in 
accord with the best modern sentiment in regard to what 
education realty means. 

And I wish to say in regard to it, lest there should be some 
misgiving on the part of the parents or people that possibly 
the new work that has been going on here for the last year may 
have crowded out some of the old learning, that possibly their 
boys and girls were not getting quite as much of what they 
might have learned if there had been no greenhouse, no raising 
of cucumbers and lettuce and things of that sort, and no cooking 
for the girls. I had a note yesterday from one of the agents of 
the Board of Education, — the man whose special work it is to 
visit these high schools and inspect them for the purpose of 
State approval, to see that they are worthy to get the State 
aid, — in which Mr. MacDonald said that he had visited this 
school this week, and he gave it his most cordial approval, say- 
ing that the work of the school had steadily improved since 
the school was established, and that it was worthy in every re- 
spect of the confidence of the Board of Education and of re- 
ceiving its share of the State aid. 
I am glad to state this here, because it shows that, while the 



15 

children have been getting something of the new, they have not 
been losing anything of the old. 

We speak of dedicating this school-house, and let me ask, 
To what are we to dedicate it? Is it to be dedicated to the 
narrow idea of education, that transient form which has been 
so prevalent, or are we to dedicate it to the more permanent 
elements of education? 

We have been accustomed to think too much of education as 
the acquisition of knowledge. We have graded our children, 
and promoted them, on the basis of what they knew. We have 
often graded our teachers on the same basis, — forgetting that 
the knowledge that they acquire is the most transient element 
which is possible in a system of education. We have given it 
so much of our thought that we have hardly recognized there 
was anything else. 

I hope most earnestly that this school will be dedicated to 
the permanent in education. Habits are permanent, power 
is permanent, tastes are permanent. And I hope that those 
elements of education will be prominent, if not uppermost, on 
the part of those who, in the years to come, are to carry on the 
work in this new school building. I hope that the scholars in 
this school may acquire a taste for books, a love of good books, 
— a permanent acquisition far beyond all that may come from 
the contents of the books that they study. 

You have a beautiful public library here. Probably the trus- 
tees report the number of books that are taken out year by year. 
The question is not, How many books are taken out in any 
public library? The question is, Who takes them out? — are the 
books taken out by the older people, the people who learned to 
read in an earlier generation, or are they taken out in increasing 
numbers by the children, who are growing up in the schools and 
coming out of them? If they are, then the future of the library 
is assured, and the library takes its place among the social agents 
of the community. That is a part of the work of the school, — 
to develop a taste for good reading. 

Then there is a love of nature. Where can it be developed 
so well as in this beautiful old town of Petersham? A love of 
art, — and for that I congratulate you that the walls of this new 
building are covered with the reproductions of the works of art 
of all the ages. 



16 

And, above everything else, the school should inculcate a 
love of service. That, I take it, is the most permanent acquisi- 
tion that can come from any system of education. Unless this 
building and this school are to be dedicated to this love of ser- 
vice, all that you can do will be idle. Every line of work in 
the school can possibly be made helpful in this direction. Even 
the school geography for the younger children may lead them 
to see how intimately all the peoples of the world are bound 
together by ties of interdependence, how for food and shelter 
and clothing they are under obligations to people who are toil- 
ing for them in far-off lands the world over. 

I am inclined to think that the strongest, highest hope of 
international peace is to come through the training of children 
in the public schools to this idea of the universal brotherhood 
of men in dependence one upon the other for the needs of life. 

And then the history! What else can history be taught 
for, if it is not to show to these boys and girls that men have 
never lived for themselves? All the lessons of history, beauti- 
fully illustrated as many of them are in these works of art in 
your school, show that the contributions of great men and 
women of the past have been not for themselves or for their 
time. There is a picture on the walls of Columbus. What is 
the lesson that the children are to learn from that? Columbus 
discovered America not for himself. The Spaniards put over 
his tomb, " Columbus for Castile and Aragon discovered a new 
world." We know better now : we know that he discovered that 
new world for the oppressed, the down-trodden, and the poor 
of all the nations of the world. 

There are in your school pictures of the works of the great 
architects and artists of the past. Did they paint, did they 
build, for themselves and their own generation alone? No, 
they have painted, they have builded, for all times. There are 
pictures there of great poets, great statesmen, great soldiers, 
great inventors. Did they do their work for themselves or for 
their generation alone? No, they did it for us, no matter how 
far back they lived. 

So out of these ordinary lessons of the public school there may 
come these ideas of public service. And I take it that that is 
the highest lesson that can possibly be taught. 



17 

All these industrial elements lend themselves so perfectly, — 
the agriculture, the domestic science, the mechanical arts, — they 
all lend themselves (and that, I take it, is to be their highest 
mission) to develop in these boys and girls the idea that they 
are to be of use in the world, in the home, on the farm, in the 
shop, in the counting-room, that they are to live, not for them- 
selves, but for those about them,— live for the communities in 
which they are placed, live for the world. 

That, I hope, is the end toward which all the work of this 
new school is to be dedicated. And, if it comes about that that 
is true, then the State will have abundant reason, and ever more 
abundant reason, to congratulate both the givers and the re- 
ceivers of this beautiful building. [Applause.] 

The Chairman. — The world has, at length, discovered that 
its vital problems relate not to the fall, but to the rise, of man, 
that its great battle is with ignorance, that its hope of 
victory is in the untiring pursuit of universal enlightenment. 

Those who have reached the period of life at which some of 
us have arrived and can look back from the crest of the present 
wave of advancement over the development — material, social, 
and religious — of the past sixty years, realizing that it is far 
greater than in ten times that number of preceding years, and 
that, with the world's rapidly multiplying resources for achieve- 
ment, the future progress must be more rapid still, can face the 
problems awaiting solution with every reason for encourage- 
ment. But, contemplating the profoundly impressive fact that 
at the end of another hundred years the more than fifteen 
hundred millions of people now upon the earth will be under 
it and succeeded by the now unborn who must pass through 
infancy and the alphabet and over the thresholds of school, 
college, library, laboratory, workshop, and church for the 
equipment and inspiration required for their ever-increasing 
needs, it follows that even the matter of a new school building 
in Petersham is not unworthy of consideration. We have, 
therefore, felt justified in asking our friends and neighbors to 
come and share with us our interest in what we have thus far 
accomplished, and we have fixed upon this early date because 
it affords us the presence of representative men distinguished 



18 

for their profound interest and productive labor in the broad 
fields of universal education. I have alluded to persons of 
my own age but, of course, without thought of the eminent 
head of our greatest university, for I was more than six months 
old before he was born, and no one could associate advanced 
years with one who can travel our country over and instruc- 
tively address, upon subjects of great public interest, audi- 
ences more in number than the days of his journeyings. Last 
evening's Boston Transcript said, " President Eliot has taken 
to the woods," adding "the Harvard forest, in Petersham." 
What interest this may have had for municipal maladminis- 
trators who have received his recent attention, I do not know. 
For us, happily, it means the privilege and pleasure of listen- 
ing to him here to-day. The great work and worth of his 
productive life are so universally and gratefully known that 
his fittest introduction is simple mention of the name of Presi- 
dent Eliot, of Harvard University. [Great applause.] 



ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT CHARLES W. ELIOT. 

Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen, — I have had the 
privilege of being in active educational administration during 
a period when a new method of teaching was coming into use 
through all grades of education from the kindergarten to the 
university. The speeches already made before you have re- 
minded me that a few words about this new mode of education 
would be pertinent, — the more so because your new school 
perfectly illustrates it. 

When I first became a teacher in Harvard University, the 
whole method of the University was a training through the 
memory, through book-learning absorbed and held by the mem- 
ory, and also through a training in mental discrimination among 
facts held in the memory or in printed records. I believe that 
to be an exact description of the whole process of systematic 
education sixty years ago. How changed to-day from bottom 
to top! Now, in addition to this training of the memory and 
this training in mental discrimination among recorded or re- 
membered facts, a whole new process has developed. That 
process is, first, a training of the senses, then a training in 
recording observations made by our senses, and, finally, a 
training in the exercise of good judgment on the facts reported 
by the senses, — reported by the senses, I say, not found in 
books, not simply held in the memory from reading books or 
hearing lectures, but reported by the senses. This method of 
training has become universal in all walks of education. A 
recent exemplification of it you may now observe here in Peters- 
ham. There is a new profession of forestry. How does the 
University train men for it ? In books, to be sure, by reading, 
but in laboratories more, in work with the fingers and the eyes 
on chemistry, physics, geology, and geography. But we do 
not stop there. Nowadays in almost all professional train- 
ing there is a large amount of what we call "field work." 
Thus we have hired a mine this summer, that our students of 
mining and metallurgy may go into that mine, and themselves 



20 

do there all the kinds of work needed to get out its ore. Again, 
this very year, far-seeing, benevolent men, filled with public 
spirit and enthusiasm for the new professions of the future, 
gave the University a large tract of beautiful woodland in the 
town of Petersham. We have there an essential means of 
training our young foresters. They are going to live here in 
Petersham four months of the year. They are going to work 
eight hours a day in those woods, doing all the things that a 
forester or a lumberman needs to know how to do. It is field 
work, not book work. It is work with the senses, the muscles, 
the nerves, with the whole being. Is it physical? Yes. Is it 
mental? Yes. It is all kinds of training put together, develop- 
ing simultaneously the whole man. So with all our professional 
training: we rely on doing things more than on reading about 
other men's doings, on doing one's self, doing with one's own 
eyes and hands, doing with the whole body as well as with the 
whole thinking force. That, I say, is the great new process 
brought into education in my day, within my own observation 
and the easy recall of my memory. 

By the way, I think you will observe that the young men 
who come here for this training in forestry will not be com- 
pletely occupied with their labors. [Laughter.] Although 
they begin with a lecture at seven o'clock, and work in the 
woods eight hours thereafter, and sometimes have an hour's 
walk to get home, I think you may depend upon it that they 
will not be exhausted at six o'clock in the evening [laughter], 
but will be ready to play on musical instruments, or act a play, 
or dance, after their day's work. I think you will find them a 
cheerful addition to the population of Petersham [applause], 
and that they will add year after year— and more and more as 
the years go by, and there are more of them — to the enjoy- 
ments of life in this town. Moreover, these Petersham woods 
will be preserved in all their beauty through long generations 
as means of professional instruction in a subject vital to New 
England's welfare. 

Here is the great new educational process of the last sixty 
years. Now your school-house and your school illustrate it. 
The process has spread through all grades of education; but 
here you are giving an admirable illustration of it at the stage of 



21 

elementary and secondary education, the grades and the high 
school. You are developing in this school instruction in the 
sciences subservient to agriculture, horticulture, and arbori- 
culture, that is, in chemistry, physics, and biology, — always, 
of course, in the elements thereof. The pupils will learn to 
do themselves the laboratory work of chemistry and physics, 
and they will go on in the spring and summer weather to botany, 
and learn to do with their own hands the planting and the 
propagating, the transplanting, the weeding, and the pruning. 
They will learn the difference between good seed and bad, be- 
tween the seed that is profitable and the seed that is unprofitable 
in this climate and on these soils. They will go on to the ele- 
ments of zoology, and learn about the animal life that is useful 
to men and the animal life which is prejudicial to crops and 
therefore to men. These are the elements of the natural 
sciences which are subservient to the great industries of agri- 
culture and horticulture, these are the subjects which are allied 
to agriculture and horticulture. 

Is a school of this sort to make farmers or to teach actual 
farming on the great scale? No. You do not propose that 
your school shall employ a pupil all day in riding the horse that's 
ploughing or in planting ten acres of potatoes. You propose 
that the boy shall learn the nature of the elementary processes 
upon which broad agriculture depends. 

It does not take much room to demonstrate the difference 
between good seed corn and poor seed corn. I saw a demon- 
stration given at the University of Wisconsin the other day, 
given in a flash by just looking at six pots full of young corn. 
The area of the top of each pot was about one square foot, and 
the depth of the pot as much. The soil was the same in every 
one of these six pots, and they had been exposed to the same 
conditions of heat and moisture. The first pot contained the 
good seed: the other five contained samples of inferior seeds, 
which had been commonly used in the State of Wisconsin be- 
fore the University of Wisconsin produced a better seed. And 
there the corn stood, — in the first pot a foot high, in the second 
ten inches, in the next perhaps seven inches, in the next five, 
in the next four. The same soil, the same conditions, — all the 
difference was in the seed. How long did it take a boy to learn 



22 

that lesson? Just the few seconds he needed to take in with 
his eyes those pots and the crops they bore. This was just one 
lesson in a six weeks' course on agriculture open to any farmer's 
son in the State of Wisconsin. The University followed up the 
lesson : it made the students who came to that six weeks' course 
the only persons to whom the University sold the good seed corn. 
So every one of the hundreds of students carried some of that 
seed corn home to use himself and sell to neighbors. That 
was the only way the neighbors could get it. One consequence 
of this policy was that in a single year there was a million of 
dollars added to the worth, the selling value, of the Wisconsin 
corn crop. How much space did it take to give that lesson? 
The area of this table. How long a time was the pupil in learn- 
ing it? A few seconds. You can do all that in your school for 
a great variety of seeds, plants, and valuable crops. This is the 
new subject of plant breeding. 

Your building, as has already been said, is a pioneer. I 
would apply to it another name: it is a missionary, an actual 
teacher for rural New England, Mexico, and far-off Argentina, 
of the right way to build school buildings and of the right things 
to put into them. But, as Mr. Martin has already said, it is the 
land about the building that is a better teacher still. I have 
understood that the town did not venture to accept from Mr. 
Brooks the deed of more than nine acres. It was perhaps a 
commendable modesty ; but I hope that in the future the town 
will be ready to accept a good deal more, — the lesson of much 
land about a school building is so valuable as missionary teach- 
ing, of land enough for ornamental planting, playgrounds, gar- 
dens, field crops, and fruits, large and small. 

This leads me to touch on another feature of the work which 
can be done in this school. A great deal of outdoor work can 
be done on your school land, an invaluable addition to the 
ordinary school curriculum. Consider how very, very few 
schools have the means of providing that outdoor training. 

Mr. Martin has already mentioned the value of the decorations 
of your building. I cordially agree with him as to their high 
value. They will give the pupils who resort to that building 
year after year a broader outlook on the world and on civiliza- 
tion; and that broader outlook, as Mr. Martin implied, is a prime 
fruit of all worthy education. 



23 

I was lately trying to answer the question, What is liberal 
education, and what are its fruits? And I found no better 
answer than this : A liberal education is any process capable of 
developing a liberal mind: its result is nothing but a state of 
mind. It does not imply the knowledge of any subject what- 
ever, not of Latin, or Greek, or mathematics, or chemistry, or 
physics, or history, or philosophy. It does imply a liberal 
state of mind, open, free, eager, candid, looking abroad. The 
curriculum of your school and the decorations on its walls ought 
to give every pupil that spends five or six years there a broad 
outlook on the world and a liberal state of mind. 

Mr. Brooks and President Wright both spoke of Harvard 
University, and its relation to the history of the Common- 
wealth and to the education of our New England communities. 
There is a close resemblance between the history of Harvard 
University and the history of your school. Both institutions 
were built up partly by the State, partly by the town, and partly 
by private citizens of public spirit and benevolence, who were 
ready to devote a portion of their own resources to public edu- 
cation. That is exactly the way in which Harvard University 
was founded and has been built up, — by the action of the colony 
of Massachusetts Bay, by gifts of land from the town of Cam- 
bridge, and by the bequest of John Harvard and his numerous 
successors. And that is exactly the way in which your school 
has been built up, — the State has aided ; the town has aided by 
larger appropriations and by the contribution of the thought and 
time of agents of the town; and then private benefactions have 
aided. 

There has been an interesting result at Cambridge, to which 
I venture to direct your attention. The man, the private 
benefactor who founded Harvard in pursuance of the previous 
act of the General Court, has the best monument in the world. 
The University bears his name; and the productive and uplifting 
force of its graduates is fitly called in each generation the living 
force of Harvard. It is a vital, growing monument which is 
going down the centuries. And by and by — not soon we hope — 
this town will take thought of John Harvard, and will make 
here of this new school, this pioneer school, this missionary 
school, a monument to another good name. [Applause.] 



24 

The Chairman. — Gratefully unobservant of any inference to 
be drawn from the closing remarks of President Eliot, let me 
say that statistics show our great man to be the American 
farmer. 

He feeds the nation, fills its treasuries, grows the food we eat, 
the cotton and wool we wear, the wood that makes and warms 
our dwellings, and sends his surplus products over all the seas. 
His are among the greatest of the inventions that have made 
possible the gigantic results of his labor and have made our 
country the richest in the world. 

His sons are everywhere, — on the ranches, in the fields, in 
the mines, in the army, in the navy, at the bar, on the bench, in 
the pulpit, and in the halls of legislation, and more than a dozen 
of them have found homes in the White House, at the nation's 
capital. His colleges and schools are multiplying, and through 
them his boys are learning the new meanings and definitions 
which science and art are giving to soil and its products, to 
irrigation, drainage, heat, light, color, electricity, and the modes 
of their employment and adaptation in the vast and widening 
fields of development ever opening to the ambitions of the young. 

There is nothing in the earth, in the waters beneath it or the 
heavens above it, alien to the interests of the intelligent and 
thoughtful farmer. 

It was recently announced that President Roosevelt is about 
to name a commission to investigate the life, surroundings, 
conditions, and interests of the farmer throughout the land, and 
that he contemplates the appointment of President Butterfield, 
of our Massachusetts Agricultural College, as a member of the 
commission. I am happy to announce that he is here, and am 
sure that you will soon be prepared to indorse the excellent 
choice of President Roosevelt. [Applause.] 



ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD. 

Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen, — It is impossible 
for me to tell you of the deep joy that fills my heart to-day, not 
only at being able to be present here and assist in my small 
way in this very significant dedication, but because of the 
meaning it all has for me and the things that I am trying to 
represent. 

For forty years the Massachusetts Agricultural College has 
endeavored to stand for that type of education which President 
Eliot has so strongly stated to you. For forty years this college, 
almost unaided, except by the work that has been done by the 
State Board of Agriculture in an educational way, has held aloft 
the torch of education for the farmer, and has clung to the idea 
that Massachusetts agriculture is worth working for and worth 
educating for. 

And to-day there is poured into our lap as representatives of 
agriculture — not directly, but through your new enterprise — 
tribute as great as it is unexpected, because agriculture and 
agricultural education have been recognized splendidly in these 
moments, by this beautiful tribute from Mr. Brooks, by the 
presence and words of Colonel Wright, a great publicist and 
investigator, by the broad-minded secretary of the Massachu- 
setts Board of Education, with all its noble traditions back of it, 
and by the greatest president of our greatest university. [Ap- 
plause.] 

Do you blame those of us who love agriculture and who be- 
lieve in its future for being proud? 

And I am glad to be here, too, not merely for those things 
which come home to me and which I must express to you, 
but because the Massachusetts Agricultural College is pleased 
to welcome to the ranks of the educational institutions of 
Massachusetts this agricultural high school. 

The agricultural colleges of the country for nearly fifty years 
(the one in our own State for forty years) have carried this 
burden nearly alone, and there has been a feeling among us 



26 

that we needed an ally that would step in between the common 
schools and the college and possess the land that there lies un- 
tilled and that has so much needed tillage. There has been a 
gulf fixed, there has been a missing link. There has been the 
need of a school in every town and in every community which 
would take agriculture as it is understood by the modern in- 
vestigator and teacher and scientific farmer, and in a school 
like this bring it before the boy and the girl in its true relations 
to other subjects and in its true relations to the vocations of life. 

Last week I had the privilege of attending the notable White 
House conference in Washington, and it was generally felt, I 
think, that one of the great addresses of the conference was 
that by James J. Hill. In many respects it was a pessimistic 
address. Mr. Hill marshalled a great array of figures to show 
that American agriculture is far from what it ought to be, that 
the American farmer is wasting his resources and is not securing 
from the soil the returns that he ought to have, — all largely his 
own fault. He spoke of the fact that the value per acre of our 
farm products in this country is less than $12. He said that 
even in the great agricultural State of Illinois the gross value 
per acre of agricultural products is only $12.50, and in his own 
State of Minnesota, noted for wheat, only $8.75; and he said 
there were only two States in the Union where the value per 
acre was $30 or more. He took occasion to point out what 
seems to be the fact, that the original soil fertility of the 
country is gradually being depleted, and he said, " There is 
New England, once made up of fertile farms and now filled 
with decadent farms and abandoned farms and a soil that is 
losing its fertility." I felt that some New England governor 
should have risen to her defence, because, while I have been 
in New England only five years, I believe — and believe more 
firmly than I did four years ago or two years ago — in the 
future of New England agriculture. 

I am ready to admit the truth of almost any story that can 
be told on the darker side. It is perfectly true that dozens 
and scores of the hill towns of New England have been depleted 
in population during the last seventy-five years. It is true 
that there are farms that have been given up. It is true that 
farming as an occupation has not the prestige that it once had. 



27 

It is true that the minds of the young people have been turned 
away from the soil, as a means of a livelihood, to other things. 
And it is true that there are communities to-day where people 
are wondering whether, after all, the battle is worth fighting, 
wondering whether the glory of these hill-towns has forever 
departed. 

I was sorry that in quoting those statistics Mr. Hill did not 
say that, whereas the value per acre of improved land of the 
agricultural products of the United States was less than $12, 
and of that agricultural empire in itself — Illinois — only $12.50, 
that the two States to which he referred which had a value 
per acre of improved land of $30 or more were Massachusetts 
and Rhode Island. [Applause.] 

The census figures show that, whereas in 1880 there were 
something over two millions of acres of improved land in 
Massachusetts, in 1900 — twenty years later — there were only 
twelve hundred thousand acres of improved land. That looks 
like a doleful story, and yet the value of the product had in- 
creased so that instead of the value per acre being $11.50, 
as it was in 1880, it was $32 in 1900. 

Now that means a change. It means that some towns per- 
haps have been permanently put out of the list of real agri- 
cultural communities. But it means change, and not neces- 
sarily decay. And it means a change in obedience to the new 
demands. It means that the old type of farming has been given 
up. It means that land has been abandoned that never ought 
to have been farmed. And it means more than that, — that the 
land that is being farmed is farmed better than any other sim- 
ilar area in America. 

And that process has been going on since the census of 1900 
in a marvellous way. I do not know anything about the number 
of acres under cultivation, but the value of the products in 
1907 was some twenty millions of dollars greater than the value 
of the products in 1900, according to the best figures we can get. 

Now it seems to me that with those things in mind, having 
in mind also the constant growth of markets, that they are 
perhaps as good as any in this country, if not the very best. 
Having in mind also the fact that the American farmer is con- 
stantly adapting himself to these changed conditions, we have 
reason for hope. 



28 

But I want to say this, too, that, if we are to have in New 
England and in Massachusetts (as it seems to me we ought to 
have) the very best type of agriculture in the world, we must 
have the very highest type of agricultural education in the 
world. 

We cannot have the great areas of the West, we cannot 
have the great staple crops of the West, but there is no reason 
why Massachusetts — even with its small area and its large inter- 
ests in manufacturing — may not have the very best type of 
agriculture. There is no reason why the Massachusetts farmer 
may not hold up for this Commonwealth the ideal that every 
acre of Massachusetts soil shall be put to its best use. If that 
use is pasture, or if it is growing chickens, or if it is the apple 
orchards on these splendid hillsides, or if it is cranberries on 
the Cape, or if it is glass farming, it is still agriculture, and it 
may be, and I believe it is going to be, the very highest form 
of agriculture. When I go back West where I came from, they 
make fun of New England agriculture. I tell them, "But look 
at our glass farming." "Oh, yes, but that isn't agriculture." 
It is the very highest form of agriculture. For a man to take 
a bushel of soil and make it yield almost as much (this is only 
a comparison, I do not vouch for the exactness of the com- 
parison), — make a bushel of soil here yield almost as much as 
an acre of soil will out there, it is the very highest type of agri- 
culture. And that is the type that lies before our Massachu- 
setts farmers if they will meet the situation. But that type of 
agriculture, my friends, spells "Education." 

I believe in New England agriculture. Even now agricult- 
ure in New England plays a larger part in our industrial life 
than we are accustomed to think. We are proud of the manu- 
facturing pre-eminence of New England. Our textile industry 
is our largest single industry, and New England is at the very 
head in this line of industry; and yet, so far as the figures 
reveal the truth, they indicate that there is more money in- 
vested in New England agriculture to-day than there is capital 
invested in the textile industry in New England. I under- 
stand that the cotton-goods manufacturing of Massachusetts 
is our largest single industry, and we all think of it as one of 
great moment. We guard it jealously, and we look after the 



29 

education of those who are to be engaged in it. Yet in Mas- 
sachusetts, which is dominantly industrial and only incidentally 
agricultural, they tell us that the value of the farms in Mas- 
sachusetts is greater than the value of the money invested in 
cotton-goods manufacturing. According to the census of 1900 
the capital invested in agriculture in Massachusetts was equal 
to the capital invested in all the manufacturing enterprises of 
the city of Boston. Even now agriculture plays a larger part 
here than many of us suppose. 

And then there is the rural life of Massachusetts and New 
England. What a contribution it has made to church and to 
state and to college and to business! And I do not believe 
myself that that contribution is to cease. It should not cease. 
We ought not to leave out from the elements of our civilization 
those forces that come out from the soil. 

I go to Boston very frequently from Amherst, and on every 
trip I pass by that wonderful engineering work and that beauti- 
ful piece of water, this reservoir down below us, and I think of 
its application to this very question. The city of Boston is 
anxious for its water supply, and at great expense it builds up 
among the hills a splendid reservoir to collect the pure waters 
of these hills and keep them pure until they come down to the 
people of the city of Boston. Is it not the concern of the people 
of Boston, of the people of every city, of the people of our country 
as a whole, that the sources of human life, the sources of the city 
supply of human life in these hill towns, shall also be kept pure 
and strong? It seems to me so. 

And these are the great reasons, — for the importance of 
agriculture as an industry at the present, and its promising im- 
portance for the future, — the reasons why this new school- 
house in Petersham is so significant. 

The agricultural college has stood for years for a type of 
education. It has stood for the advancement of a certain voca- 
tion. It has stood also — and is trying to stand to-day even 
more fully — for a leadership not only along the lines of building 
up agriculture as an industry, but for leadership in all that 
goes to make country life worth while, prosperous and intellect- 
ual and happy. And it has to-day in this school a new ally. 

It seems to me that the people of Petersham cannot afford 



30 

to think of any other course for the future than to make sure 
that this new school, this new departure, shall always be in the 
front rank as an agricultural high school. You are the pioneers 
in New England among public schools in this enterprise, and you 
cannot afford to relinquish the proud title which you have won 
by your far-sightedness, by the generosity of your citizens. 

But I would like to think that this school, while it stands for 
agriculture, while it shows the young people the value of this 
type of education, whether they go into the farming vocation or 
not, while it bring them into contact with the things of out-of- 
doors and inculcates within them the love of nature and the 
love of the men and the women who do the common work of 
the world, — I would like to think also that this school, in some 
fashion, may become a real leader in this community. 

I know nothing about the agricultural conditions of this 
town, I do not know what the future promises for them; but 
it seems to me that Petersham, with this new leader in its midst 
ought to be able to demonstrate that New England agriculture, 
that Massachusetts agriculture, has a great future before it, not 
merely because it promises to grow more and constantly more 
valuable things out of the soil, but because through means of 
education, through a larger outlook upon life, it can make the 
country a better place to live in than it has ever been before. 

I believe that the future of agriculture, even in the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts, is going to be greater than the past. 
Indeed, I believe that the golden age of New England agriculture 
is before us. And it seems to me that this beautiful school- 
house in Petersham, with all its equipment, with all that it 
stands for, if it is wisely directed, is kept to its task, is managed 
on the broadest and most liberal lines, will be regarded as the 
prophet of the new era in agriculture in Massachusetts. 



The day's proceedings ended with the singing of "America" 
— the audience little dreaming how soon the old church, with 
its Paul Revere hall, was to become ashes, and the voice of 
President Wright to be heard no more. 



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